The Prime Alternative

A few of you might remember a couple of years ago, (Almost 3 now!) when I had just about disappeared from the site. I was working on my first commissioned project, which led to all kinds of good things.

My now good friend Rick Carthew contacted me back in 2010, wanting me to build a 3D mock up of his ideal version of the Enterprise. He was going to have a Studio Quality built to display, but wasn't exactly sure what it would look like. It took 6 months, but we got it finished, and ended up doing a shuttle and drydock too.

The physical model is currently being built... much of it by 3D printing my 3D parts. It's really neat to see parts I've been looking at on the screen forever become real.

We were going to wait until the model was finished to release any pictures, but we decided to go ahead and do it now. In the latest Into Darkness Sulu clip, we see a newer Design shuttlecraft that looks an awful lot like the one we did for this project.

After I finished the 3D model, We ended up making several videos, and a bunch of wallpaper, that I have been dying to show you guys. As a teaser, here is a sample of the kind of stuff I've been doing with it:

Wow, just, wow... Very nice take on the E and the shuttle. Loved the stuff on your site. Similar to what deg had done, you and your partner's vision is a very fresh take on the classic design. Love it! (insert standard rant on how JJ should have done similar for the NuMovie Enterprise here)

It would be cool to take this Enterprise model and make it as high res as the Abramsprise model.

Click to expand...

Yeah, one day I might re-build it, but I'm really happy with the way it looks. Back in early 2010 when I started building the model, I hadn't figured out subdivision modeling yet, so everything on this one was box modeled.

They look pretty good... Vimeo didn't chop them down too much. My favorite is the middle one, where you can watch the model just spin around forever.

I did these just for fun... The 3D showcase one was basically a test of the specular textures and the navigation lights, but turned out so cool I had to finish it. The TV Intro one is just a bunch of test clips that I made, edited together.